BASIC  GOD  BLURTS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Basic God Blurts.”

On this annual feast of the Most Holy Trinity, God, One God, Three Persons, I thought I’d like to say we have basic God instincts in our life - whether we are aware of them or not. 

I notice them, I hear them, these Basic God Blurts - that people blurt out from time to time.

FOR STARTERS - HERE ARE A FEW

For starters here are a few.

• “Oh my God!”
• “Holy Mackerel.”
• “Holy Cow!”
• “Holy God.”
• “Holy Moses.”
• “Holy crud or crap, or etc.”
• “Gosh!”
• “Jesus Christ, for crying out loud….”
• “God dang it.”
•  “Holy Mother of  God.”

Or we hear variation blurts -  of the opposite:

• “Hell no!”
• “That’s a hell of a way to show appreciation after all I’ve done.”
• “Go to hell!”
• “May you rot in hell for all eternity.”
• “May God  make you disappear!”
•  “Drop dead!”
• “I wish you never existed.”

QUESTION

What do you say when you’re angry or frustrated or you really want to verbally hurt another?

Does cursing help? Does cursing that brings in God - or the absence of God help?

What do you blurt out when you see an accident or a great football catch or a home run that wins the game? Oh my God, did you see that. Wow!”

What do  you scream when your horse or your son or daughter comes from behind and wins the race in the last two seconds?

We scream out blurts like, “Oh my God. Oh my God. We won! We won!”

FEAST OF THE HOLY TRINITY

Today is the feast of the Holy Trinity.

We Christians have been taught the great revelation about God - that God is three - and God is one.

That is quite a revelation.

God is a Father - Our Father - who loves us - knows us - who cares about us.

God is also Christ - the Son - who reveals to us himself as well as the Father.  Jesus told us, “See me - see the Father.”

This Jesus told us about the Spirit.

That’s Three who are One.

We heard the ending of today’s gospel from Matthew: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

It took the Christian church centuries - heresies - splits - councils - to finally come up with a few basic creeds. We say two of them at our Masses: the Apostles Creed and the Nicean Creed.

Saint Augustine spent much time - 30 years - much energy - much probing - much prayer - to pull together his great book entitled, “The Trinity.” It’s 15 books.

I have never met anyone who has read that entire book yet. But people remember the simple story of the boy on the beach and Augustine a lot more. It’s told by preachers over and over and over again - especially on the Feast of the Holy Trinity.

Augustine is at the beach and he sees a little boy bringing a shell full of water from the sea to a hole in the sand. He’s going back and forth doing this. Augustine goes up to the kid, “Little boy, what are you trying to do?

The kid answers, “Oh I am going to bring the sea and put it in my hole in the ground.”

Augustine answers, “You can’t put the sea in that hole.  You can’t do that. It’s too vast.”

So the kid says, “Look, I can do that sooner than you can figure out the  Trinity.”

THE OCEAN

One of the two great metaphors for God is the ocean. The other is Marriage.

I lived in a retreat house on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean for 7 years - and many,  many, many a person told me they found God on the edge of the waters - especially at sunrise.

I didn’t spend much time at the Pacific - but I’m sure people meet God at the edge of the waters there as well - Sunset.

Hopefully in every trip to the waters - hopefully in every Marriage - everyone screams out, “Oh my God!”

However, as I lived on the edge of the Atlantic - after 6 months - I got used to it. I assume the same thing happens in marriage.

But there are times.

There are moments at the ocean - moments of sunrise - at 6:17 AM  - and we pray out loud, “Oh my God.”

Hopefully there are moments of renewal in every Marriage.

I see that on the day of marriages - being up close to wedding days - like inches away from eyes and words and faces.

I hope honeymoons - a zillion expressions of love - in married couples bring them into the presence of God.

I know I see those moments in the birth of a baby - and then the birth of the first grand kid.

I see those God moments when parents and grandparents see kids graduate from kindergarten, grade school, high school and college.

Oh my God.

NUMBERS

Life has numbers.

Little kids learn their ABC’s and 1,2,3’s.

God is complex. Life is complex. There are billions and billions of memories, DNA, cells, stars, vastness.

Yet God is as simple as a Father loving and holding a son or daughter or a wife holding her husband or the ocean hitting the beach over and over again for 5 billion years.

CONCLUSION

The title of this homily is, “Basic God Blurts!”

I see couples at the beach - walking and holding hands.

I see with my imagination.

I hear them saying, “We don’t do this enough. Oh my God, we need to spend more time walking and talking.”

I see couples coming out of the parking lot and holding hands as they walk to a church for the funeral of a close friend - their age - and they know now a widow or a widower - has to go it alone.

“Oh my God.”

I hope all of us pray deep prayers of appreciation for the gift of life - that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is keeping me in existence.

I hope all of us when we get really scared - scared of death and hell - and what’s going to happen hereafter - and we blurt out in prayer.

Oh my God….